As Israeli policy-makers began preparing this week for upcoming negotiations with the Palestinians on the implementation of the recently signed autonomy accord, the rejectionist Hamas movement stepped up its terror campaign against the agreement.
On Monday, a member of the Islamic fundamentalist group detonated a booby-trapped car outside an Israeli army base near the West Bank town of Beit E1, killing himself and wounding 30 people on a passenger bus that happened to be driving by.
The previous evening, unidentified terrorists fired shots at a Jewish woman who was waiting at a bus stop in the Etzion bloc of West Bank settlements south of Bethlehem. The woman suffered medium wounds in her stomach.
An hour later, shots were fired from a passing car at an Israeli vehicle, also in the Gush Etzion region. No one was hurt, but several bullets hit the car.
The attacks appeared to be the latest attempts by Muslim fundamentalists to sabotage the historic accord Israel signed in Washington last month with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The Israel Defense Force chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, said Monday that similar terrorist incidents could be expected in the near future, requiring extra caution on the part of Israelis.
In Monday’s incident, a car bearing Israeli license plates blew up next to an Egged passenger bus that was on its way from Jerusalem to the West Bank settlement of Shiloh.
The bomb was described as very powerful, consisting partly of nails and a hand grenade. The terrorist was killed instantly, but there were no serious injuries among the bus passengers. Three were reported to have sustained medium injuries, and the rest were only lightly wounded.
The dead terrorist was identified by the army as Kamal Bani Odei of the West Bank village of Tamoun. Odei, a member of Hamas, was on the wanted list of the Israeli security forces.
Shortly after the attack, newspaper offices in Jerusalem received anonymous telephone calls claiming that Hamas was responsible for the attack, and that the terrorist was a member of the group’s Izz a-Din al-Kassam military wing.
The attack was described as retaliation for an Israeli raid on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip two days earlier.
In that incident last Saturday, Israeli soldiers fired hand-held rockets at homes in the Gaza Strip, in an effort to find Hamas militants. Two commanders of the Kassam group were killed and 16 others were arrested in what IDF officials termed a major setback to the fundamentalist movement.
RABIN PRAISES RAID ON HAMAS
The next day, Israeli security officials described the captured terrorists as members of three militant units considered “among the most dangerous terrorist units operating in the West Bank.”
The Kassam militants allegedly were responsible for a series of terrorist attacks, including a July 1 assault on an Egged bus in Jerusalem, in which two women were killed.
During a news conference Sunday in the West Bank town of Hebron, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin praised Israeli security forces for their raid against Hamas terrorist units.
Reacting to a protest over the raid that was lodged by PLO leader Yasser Arafat, Rabin said the IDF would continue to take such actions without coordinating its moves with “anyone.”
Israeli security forces are reportedly seeking to capture as many terrorists as possible before the IDF completes the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho next April. According to the Israel-PLO agreement, Israel will begin its withdrawal from the two regions in December.
Political sources in Jerusalem said this week that Israel’s continued policy of hunting down suspected terrorists would be discussed during upcoming negotiations with the PLO.
Talks between the two sides on implementing the autonomy accord are scheduled to begin within two weeks, but the Palestinians have not yet named their negotiators. The delay appears to be a reflection of personal differences within the PLO ranks.
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